Returning Player Guide - What Changed since Cataclysm

Welcome to Wowhead's Returning Player Guides! With these guides, our intention is to help players that have quit in the past to better situate themselves with the new systems and mechanics of Warcraft. This one guide, in particular, is focused on players that have stopped playing back in Cataclysm. This expansion dealt with Deathwing, the former corrupted Dragon Aspect, and what it meant for the game has resonated over the years!

Returning Player Guides

The Plot So Far

This section is dedicated to how the main lore featured in an expansion has evolved over the years. We will cover important plot points that happened on said expansion, and show what has changed since then!

Each different expansion has had a plot that is likely not covered here. For more information on general lore information, check our Lore of WoW guides!

The main plot of Cataclysm was defeating 死亡之翼 after his awakening changed Azeroth forever. With the usage of the Dragon Soul against him, all Dragon Aspects ended up losing their immortality, beginning the Age of the Mortals. , the Aspect of Dreams, was the first Aspect to be slain, being killed during the events of Legion.

拉格纳罗斯 and 奥拉基尔, elemental lords aligned with Deathwing and slain during the Cataclysm, were since replaced with the help of Shaman all around Azeroth, during the Shaman Class Campaign:

, one of the major firelords left alive in the 火焰之地, was willing to work with the mortals and defeated his rival, , son of 雷奥利斯领主, and rose to the position of Elemental Lord.

, formerly imprisoned into 雷霆之怒，逐风者的祝福之剑, was freed by the Shaman of Azeroth, and also rose to the position of Elemental Lord.

拉希奥, the uncorrupted black dragon we rescued from the 荒芜之地 as an egg (龙蛋仍在成长) and was later part of the 龙父之牙 questline, was a huge help against the Sha menace in Mists of Pandaria, the expansion that followed Cataclysm, although he was partially responsible for Garrosh's destiny. After Mists of Pandaria, Wrathion made minor cameos and is currently wandering around Azeroth.

Races

All races in Cataclysm, besides Worgen and Goblin, have since received new models, with a higher polygon count, while keeping their cartoonish feel.

New Races

Cataclysm introduced two new races into the game, 狼人 and 地精. One new race has since been introduced. For more detailed information on each race, both old and new, look at our Alliance Races and Horde Races overview!

熊猫人 is an elusive race, originally hailing from the Pandaren Empire located in the continent of Pandaria. The playable generation of Pandaren hails from the back of 神真子, a humongous turtle that has an entire island on its back. Pandaren start as a neutral race, and have the option to sworn allegiance to either the Alliance or the Horde at the end of their unique starting zone experience.

Once you pick a side, you can still communicate with Pandaren on the other side, if you choose the Pandaren language.

震山掌: Strikes the target with lightning speed, incapacitating them for 4 sec, and turns off your attack.

Allied Races

Starting with Battle for Azeroth, but available during Legion, a new set of races was added: Allied Races. These are special races that start at level 20 and don't have a starting zone experience. They're not automatically unlocked, needing to go through a few requirements to unlock them, as well as a small quest chain once said requirements are obtained. Those also have special Heritage Armor, that can be obtained once reaching level 110 without any paid boosts.

Below is a small resume on each of the Allied Races currently available ingame (or are scheduled to come soon!). For more information on Allied Races, check our Allied Races Overview!

光铸德莱尼 are Draenei who went through a ritual to become infused with the Light, in an effort to aid them in their efforts against the Burning Legion. After thir final victory against the Legion, Lightforged Draenei returned to Azeroth and reunited with their Draenei brethren, together with the Alliance.

圣光清算: When you die the Light avenges you, dealing Holy damage to enemies within 8 yards and healing allies.

虚空精灵 is a sect of Blood Elves who attempted to delve into the Void and now struggle with the whispers. is the first mortal to succeed in defying the shadow's whispers, and now she aids this group of elves who nearly gave in to darkness. Alleria has vowed to train these void elves to control the shadows within them and pledge their newfound powers to the Alliance.

空间裂隙: Tear a rift in space. Reactivate this ability to teleport through the rift. 30 yd range. 3 min cooldown.

至高岭牛头人 are direct descendants of Huln, brave hero from the War of the Ancients. Though the Legion invaded their lands and sowed seeds of distrust between them, the tribes of Highmountain stand united once more. At long last they are ready to venture beyond their sacred mountain and stand beside their kin from Kalimdor, lending their nobility and strength to the mighty Horde.

夜之子 are the former Night Elves of Suramar, who were isolated from the world for 10,000 years, and grew increasingly dependant on the arcane powers of the Nightwell. To protect this power, the leaders of the Nightborne struck a bargain with the Burning Legion that plunged their kingdom into civil war. After fighting for freedom from their demonic masters, the Nightborne seek allies in the Horde to help them reclaim their place in the world.

Disclaimer: As Dark Iron Dwarves are part of the Battle for Azeroth expansion, not all information on them as a playable race have been discovered yet.

Dark Iron Dwarves are a dwarven clan known for their fiery temper and fierce determination, and have a turbulent history with the other dwarven clans. A failed coup in Ironforge resulting in the War of the Three Hammers and former service of the firelord Ragnaros are some of the past misdeeds. Now part of the Alliance under the leadership of 茉艾拉·索瑞森, daughter of 麦格尼·铜须国王, they seek to unite themselves to harness the power of Azerite and aid in the struggle against the Horde.

Mole Machine: While outdoors, summon a Mole Machine that tunnels through the earth. 30 min cooldown.

Mass Production: Items crafted by Blacksmithing are created twice as quickly.

Disclaimer: As Mag'har Orcs are part of the Battle for Azeroth expansion, not all information on them as a playable race have been discovered yet.

Mag'har Orcs are a group of united clans from alternate universe Draenor. Their Warchief is Grom Hellscream, who famously refused to drink the Blood of Mannoroth in the Warlords of Draenor Cinematic, founded the Iron Horde, and later helped the Alliance and Horde defeat Archimonde. The Horde seeks their help as a way to pay the debt for helping them back in Draenor.

Racials:Ancestral Call - Invoke the spirits of your ancestors granting you their power. Increases a random secondary stat by 102 for 12 seconds.

Open Skies - Increases mounted speed by 10%.

Pure Blood - Reduces the duration of Poisons, Diseases and Curses by 20%.

Sympathetic Vigor - Increases Pet Health by 10%.

New Classes

Together with new races, expansions added new classes. Wrath of the Lich King was the first expansion to add a new class, with 死亡骑士s, but since then, more classes were added:

武僧 are masters of bare-handed combat. When the Pandaren were subjugated by the Mogu centuries ago, it was the Monks that brought hope to a seemingly dim future. Restricted from using weapons by their slave masters, these Pandaren instead focused on harnessing their chi and learning weaponless combat. When the opportunity for revolution struck, they were well-trained to throw off the yoke of oppression.

恶魔猎手 are disciples of Illidan Stormrage. They uphold a dark legacy, one that frightens their allies and enemies alike. The Illidari embrace fel and chaotic magics - energies that have long threatened the world of Azeroth - believing them necessary to challenge the Burning Legion. Wielding the powers of demons they’ve slain, they develop demonic features that incite revulsion and dread in fellow elves.

As a Hero Class, Demon Hunters start at level 98 and have a very special starting zone experience, detailing what happened after Illidan's defeat at the 黑暗神殿. You also need a level 70 on the server you want to create your Demon Hunter on.

Leveling

Leveling received a couple changes since Cataclysm unleashed Azeroth's facelift and changed some zone leveling thresholds.

Questing and Zones

Since patch 7.3.5, questing zones now scale to your level. As long as you have enough level to start questing in that zone, you're able to stay there till you run out of quests for that zone, or you reach the maximum scaling level for that zone.

Zones have the following scaling thresholds. You can click on each section for a leveling guide for each part!

New ContinentsNew expansions always add more continents. Cataclysm did not add a new continent, unlike past expansions, but has changed the game forever - With Deathwing's awakening, Azeroth felt it to its core, with many Azeroth zones being forever changed.

Below are the new continents added with each expansion after Cataclysm:

Mists of Pandaria added Pandaria, a continent previously hidden from sight with the help of ancient magic - The Pandaren originally hail from there.

Warlords of Draenor has us go back in time to uncover the original Draenor, before its destruction at the hands of Ner'zhul.

Battle for Azeroth is uncovering the continents of Kul Tiras, an Alliance continent controlled by House Proudmoore, and Zandalar, the seat of power of the Zandalari Troll empire.

Quest Menu

Since Cataclysm, the Quest Menu has been merged with the Map, and they can both be accessed by either pressing the old Quest menu keybind (default L), or the Map menu keybind (default M).

On the new Quest menu, you can choose to display what quests are being tracked or not, and it shows the general area where you can find the quest objectives at. When tracking a quest, the general area is also highlighted with a blue display on the minimap.

If you want, you can disable the quest tracker at any point by right-clicking a quest on your quest log.

Dungeon Leveling

Dungeons continue being a viable way to level your character.

When queueing for a dungeon, you can either choose to queue to a Random dungeon or a Specific dungeon.

By queueing to a Random dungeon, the game will try to find a group for a dungeon in your level range, and you gain extra rewards like 一袋烧焦的好东西, which contains a rare item, as well as extra experience.

By queueing to a specific dungeon, the game will try to find a group for that dungeon you've selected, however, there will be no extra rewards.

To complement these changes, dungeon quests are now seldom found around the world - Instead, you will find NPCs at the entrance of the dungeon with quests for that dungeon.

Heirloom Equipment

Heirlooms are a special kind of equipment that scales with you as you level up, and gives additional bonuses like experience increases or effects on enemy deaths.

Ever since their introduction in Wrath of the Lich King, heirlooms evolved to a full-fledged system - With the addition of the Heirloom tab (Shift + P, go to the Heirlooms tab), you only need to buy (or upgrade) them once. Once you buy an Heirloom, you will "learn" it, and it can be created multiple times, on the fly, by any characters on your account.

As max level caps have increased since Cataclysm, Heirlooms also had to adapt. Existing Heirlooms can now be upgraded with items like 传世传家宝刃鞘, that increase the level range of the heirloom.

Collecting multiple Heirlooms has another reward that helps you level. Earning the achievement 传家宝收藏家 gives you access to a 代驾型摩托 - A mount that can be used at any level, no riding skill needed!

You can also buy Heirlooms with other currencies, such as 冠军的徽记 from the Argent Tournament, 暗月奖券 from the Darkmoon Faire, and specific currencies during World Events.

Talents

The talent system went through a major overhaul since Cataclysm. Now, instead of having three trees of talents with mostly small tuning pieces, you must choose your specialization, with each class having 3 options, except 德鲁伊 and 恶魔猎手, with 4 and 2 options, respectively. Choosing your specialization unlocks the core abilities and traits of it.

On top of your specialization, the new talent system consists of seven rows, with 3 options each, of strong and even game-style changing abilities. You are able to pick one option in each row to change how your specialization plays. Each row usually has an underlying theme to it, like mobility or damage mitigation, with each option offering a different way to improve your character in that aspect. You can learn more about different specializations and talents in our Class Guides.

The Dual Talent system has since been broadened, and now you can change your specialization at any time, without any cost, as long as you're out of combat. In order to change talents, you must be out of combat and you either need to be in a resting zone, like a major city or inn or to be under the effect of special items that allow you to change talents on the fly, like 宁神书卷.

Riding and Transportation

The main change about riding since Cataclysm is that mounts are account-wide - Once you learn a riding mount, all characters on your account can use the mount (provided you have the minimum adequate riding skill to ride it)! This makes mount farming somewhat easier, as you can attempt them on multiple characters;

The mount menu has also been revamped. You can now mark mounts as Favorites (and even have a spell to summon one of your favorite mounts at random!). You can also search for mounts in the mount menu, and this function extends to mounts you do not currently own - You can see their models and where to obtain them.

TransportationTransportation has also evolved over the years. Along with more zeppelins and boats to other places, Flight Paths continue to be a quick way around zones and many transportation items like extra Hearthstones are now available through different means.

Class Quests and Halls

Legion has added Class Halls, a reminiscent of the class quest system from Vanilla. Class Halls are locations accessible only to members of your class, and in there, you can also complete the Order Hall Campaign, a series of quests that highlight using your class' strengths to fight against the Burning Legion.

Artifact Weapons

In Battle for Azeroth, which is scheduled to arrive on August 14th, we will retire Artifact Weapons and go back to normal weapon drops.

In Legion, weapon drops don't exist - Instead, in an effort against the Burning Legion, we seek powerful weapons of lore to aid us in the fight.

You can earn your own Artifact Weapon starting at level 98 when you can start question in Legion content. Each specialization has its specific Artifact Weapon, and it differs from the usual weapon drops in the manner that it levels with you - You increase its item level by socketing Relics on your Artifact Weapon.

Each Artifact Weapon also has traits, which is a talent tree for the weapon itself - very reminiscent of the Cataclysm talent trees, artifact traits can be obtained by collecting Artifact Power and applying it onto your Artifact weapon.

Gear and How to Obtain It

Gear has since become much easier to obtain, and it is a lot more tailored to the strengths of your character. Some of the changes in gear over the years include:

Gear can no longer have more than one Primary Stat at the same time - If you play a class that uses more than 1 Primary Stat (like Paladins, they use Intellect to heal and Strength to tank/dps), your gear will automatically change between Strength and Intellect depending on your current specialization;

Mastery: Enhances a key characteristic of your specialization, changes in each specialization.

Gear now also has a Titanforged system. All gear drops start at a base item level, and there is a diminishing chance, when the item is generated, to have higher item levels, in increments of 5. If an item has 5 or 10 item levels above its base item level, it is a Warforged item. If an item has 15 or more item levels above its base level, it becomes Titanforged. This makes it so every niche of content has an (albeit small) chance of becoming an upgrade for you.

Reforging, the system that allowed you to move stats around in gear, was also removed.

World Quests and Nethershard/Veiled Argunite

A good starter point to obtain gear once you're at the maximum level cap is World Quests and gathering 虚空碎片/黯淡的阿古尼特水晶. Those currencies are inspired by the Justice Point system, first used to supplement gear from raiding. Now, those are used as ways to help players gear on the first few parts of the level cap.

World QuestsDaily quests were a feature through all of Cataclysm, especially during Firelands and the 熔火前线 campaign. The daily quest system was replaced by World Quests, a system that respawns quests you've completed on a specific zone at regular intervals and gives you rewards like Gold, Artifact Power, and Gear.

Nethershards虚空碎片 is a token of crystallized Nether that drops from World Quests in the 破碎海滩 and in Legion Invasions across the Broken Isles. 虚空碎片 can be used to buy vanity rewards as well as Dauntless Tokens, tokens that transform into pieces of gear for a specific slot!

Veiled Argunite黯淡的阿古尼特水晶 is a stronger version of Nethershards, and those drop from World Quests, Elites and miscellaneous quests in Argus, the Legion's homeworld. 黯淡的阿古尼特水晶 is used to buy Relinquished Tokens, Like Dauntless Tokens, those can transform into pieces of gear for a specific slot. However, those can transform into World Quest drops, Dungeon drops, or if you're lucky enough, Legendaries!

Reputation Gear

The reputation system has expanded over the years, but it still offers starting gear for newer players. You can now also continue grinding reputation with certain factions past Exalted, for improved rewards. Overall, reputations are less grindy, but still a big part of the game.

Factions also still offer cosmetic rewards like toys and mounts. During Cataclysm, factions offered Shoulder enchants that served as enhancements to your character's status. These have since been scrapped, in favor of utility shoulder enchants that enhance drop rates, like 觅法者之赐 and 猎血者之赐.

Dungeons

Heroic dungeons were a fixture of Cataclysm, and especially hard at the beginning of the expansion, but they didn't serve much of a purpose for more progressed players after they did gather some gear. This has been fixed in Legion, with dungeons offering gear that suits all kinds of players. Heroic is no longer the hardest difficulty there is and instead can simply be entered by characters on the level cap. You can also queue via the Dungeon Finder tool, once past an item level threshold.

Dungeons now come in 4 different difficulties: Normal, Heroic, Mythic, and Mythic Keystone. Normal and Heroic can be accessed from the Group Finder in the Dungeons and Raids tab (press I). These harder difficulties award better gear.

Normal is the easiest difficulty there is, you can immediately queue for those after hitting the level cap, and are the only difficulty accessible while leveling.

Heroic is a middle of the road difficulty. You can queue for a heroic via the Group Finder once you reach a certain item level threshold, or if you have a group of friends, you can simply walk to the instance. Heroic Dungeons have a daily lockout.

Mythic is a harder dungeon that cannot be queued for, instead, you need to create a group with your friends, or via the Group Finder, and run to the instance's door. Mythic Dungeons are on a weekly lockout.

Mythic Keystone is a special dungeon mode that can only be accessed by using an on the altar near a dungeon's entrance. Mythic Keystone dungeons are special because they offer a scaling difficulty, the higher the value of your Keystone, the harder the dungeon will be. Those can scale indefinitely.

For more information about dungeons, check out our Legion Dungeon Overview and our Mythic Keystone Dungeons guide!Timewalking DungeonsThis is a special dungeon mode, which allows you to revive your experiences of Dungeons of old. Every couple weeks, a Timewalking event will be active, allowing you to run special versions of old dungeons. You are scaled down to the original level of the dungeons, and the drops you get there are scaled to your current level.

In Timewalking dungeons you can collect 时空扭曲徽章, yet another reminiscent of the Justice Point system. You can collect those to buy special, updated versions of old Justice Point gear, or cosmetic items of old such as 枪穗的百万像素仿真取景器 and 戈博格的闪光宝贝.

Raids

Cataclysm cemented the idea of raids having more than 1 difficulty mode, with first including 10-man and 25-man normal and heroic mods, then with Raid FInder being released in Dragon Soul. Since then, a new difficulty mode was added with Mythic, as well as making the middle-of-the-road difficulties flexible.

The current difficulty modes are:

Raid Finder is the easiest difficulty setting and can be queued via the Dungeons and Raids tab. The Raid Finder will gather a group of 25 people to kill bosses.

Normal and Heroic: Those are middle-of-the-road difficulties that you need to find a group and run to the raid's entrance. A Normal or Heroic Raid group can contain 10 to 30 players and bosses will scale accordingly to your group's size. You can also invite your friends that play on different servers!

Mythic: The hardest difficulty setting of a raid, destined for guilds. Mythic raids are balanced around 20 people in a group.

Tier SetsTier Sets are now different in the fact that you create tier pieces via tokens that drop from bosses, instead of having to go to a vendor to purchase a piece. Tier sets have been increased to a total of 6 pieces, but you only need 4 pieces equipped to obtain every possible set bonus.

Tier sets also change their Primary Stats and set bonuses when you change your specialization, so you only need to collect 1 set of Tier to have access to all bonuses when playing your character.

Lockouts and CoinsRaid Lockouts have significantly changed since Cataclysm: Dungeons above Normal Difficulty and Raids of all difficulties still have a lockout. However, you only get what's called loot locked - You can kill bosses as many time as you want in a given lockout, but you only have a chance at loot for the first time you kill a boss on that lockout.

You can bypass those loot limitations if you use a 破碎命运印记 after killing a boss. By using those mystical seals, you have a second chance of getting a piece of loot, and if you win a piece, it will go straight to your bags. However, you can only obtain 3 Seals per week, so think wisely where you wanna use yours! Coins can also be used the first time you kill a boss for the week.

Mythic raids retain the old instance lockouts, meaning you will get yourself locked for the week after killing a Mythic boss, and can't enter a Mythic raid with another lockout ID.

Professions

Professions have been massively expanded over the years.

One of the main changes to professions is that its now you can level your professions the entire way by using recipes and materials from the current expansion! You no longer need to go scrounging low-level materials to get through the earlier recipes.

The Professions UI has also been heavily expanded - You can now more easily filter recipes, as well as check which recipes you haven't learned yet, and where to find said patterns.

Legion has also implemented Ranks for each recipe - Each profession recipe has 3 ranks. Higher rank recipes are more efficient, either requiring fewer materials to create or creating more items with each craft.

Transmogrification

Transmogrification was added during Dragon Soul, and has since become one of the more popular features in WoW. Since its implementation, the main change is that you now "learn" transmog pieces, meaning you no longer need to keep the pieces on your bags (or the Void Storage). You also gain access to all available gear from quests you've completed, even quest items you did not pick!

Another change is that transmogrification now has its own menu. You can check out all gear pieces you currently have, as well as tier sets.

More changes to the transmog system includes hiding shoulders and belts, as well as more broadened weapon transmog options!

Pet Battles

Another system that has been severely expanded over the years is the Companion system - Now you can level your companions and use them to battle against other companions, and even players!

Like Mounts, Companions are also learned and no longer occupy a bag slot when learned. You can also go into the wild and capture new companions to use as your own, or battle with them. They're also account-wide, which means all characters on your account will have access to them.

PvP

In general, PvP has mostly changed since Cataclysm. The Battleground system has been expanded, composed of a total of 12 different Battlegrounds to fight against, with different winning conditions on each of them. You can now earn experience inside Battlegrounds, for those who prefer the PvP aspects of the game than to complete quests and dungeons. Battlegrounds are also a source of gear, and viable to use in PvE as well, as Resilience as a stat no longer exists.

Similar to the talent system, there are also Honor Talents that work in the same way, but are only active during PvP combat. Participating in PvP combat at max level will award you Honor Points which will increase your prestige level, a type of PvP progression system, which unlocks more Honor Talent options as you level up.

Arenas were proven to be a success and continue to be expanded through the expansions. The core concept hasn't changed - You still fight other players in teams of 2, 3 or 5 players. However, there are no longer "arena teams", and your PvP rating is now attached to your character. More arena maps have also been added since Cataclysm, and now you can fight in 8 different maps.

Cataclysm was the first expansion that introduced Rated Battlegrounds, a competitive version of battlegrounds. With a decent amount of success, the core system is still the very same.

Another major change for PvP since Cataclysm is the 战争守则, or PvP templates. Your PvP stats in instanced content (Battlegrounds or Arena) are no longer directly determined by your gear. Instead, each specialization has a different PvP template, with predetermined stats, and said stats are raised by the overall item level of your gear. So, in instanced PvP, to get the maximum strength from your gear, you want to wear the highest item level possible. For World PvP and similar areas, the templates are not applied and your stats will come from your normal gear.

评论

评论来自 Wardak

Great guide !

I just noticed one thing which seems wrong to me:

Like Mounts, Companions are also learned and no longer occupy a bag slot when learned.

In my remembrance, in Cataclysm, battle pets and mounts were already learnable :D Only special battle pets which are account-wide, like 暴雪熊宝宝 or 小翼 didn't disappeared from your bag and you had to send them by mail to all your characters to make them learn it.

评论来自 Nzall

One thing that might be worth mentioning: Alongside Warforging and Titanforging, gear has a chance to also gain a socket (there are only certain accessories that have a socket by default) or a tertiary stat (Speed, Avoidance, Leech or Indestructible).